66 my Redeemer liveth." (Job xix. 25.) How great are your privileges, when you look to the long lost privileges of the Jews; how great is your light, when you contemplate the spiritual darkness of the Gentile! The Jew was once the enlightened receptacle of the truth; but when Christ" came to his own, his own re"ceived him not;" and then was he offered

a light to lighten the Gentiles," and at some future period "to be the glory of his people "Israel." Take your great practical lesson herein from the words of the Apostle of us Gentiles : "Well; because of unbelief they "were broken off, and thou standest by faith. “ Be not high-minded, but fear: for if God

spared not the natural branches, take heed "lest he also spare not thee. Behold, there"fore, the goodness and severity of God: on "them which fell, severity; but towards thee, "goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: "otherwise thou also shalt be cut off." (Rom. xi. 20-22.)

To you, my brethren, who so regard Christ, there is matter enough for warning, for consolation, for encouragement, for gratitude, and for love in this single text, to preclude the necessity of further dwelling on your Christian pri

vileges than what time now demands that I put before others who think not as you think, and care but little about promoting the knowledge of Christ, either in their own hearts and lives, or for the spiritual good of their fellow creatures. Would God that I were spared from such distinction, and that the time were come wherein it is declared, in the truth of the divine promises, that "they shall not teach every man "his neighbour, and every man his brother,

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saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know "me, from the least to the greatest." (Heb. viii. 11.)

in

But these times have not yet arrived. To some of you, my brethren," Christ crucified," your inward feelings, and your outward walk in life, is as much "a stumbling block," as ever he was to the Jews; and to some, in your virtual denial and contempt of him, "Christ "crucified" is as much, as ever he was " to the "Greeks, foolishness."

You live in this Christian land, and avow your Christian name. You read or hear the evidences of the Christian faith, and express your wonder that the Jew should still deny Christ, and that the heathen idolater should still "fall down to the stock of a tree.' Did

not the Jews themselves, in the very moment of their rejecting Christ, stand upon precisely the very same argument, "and say," in the day of Christ's humiliation among them, "If "we had been in the days of our fathers, we "would not have been partakers with them in "the blood of the Prophets?" And what was the severe reply which the Saviour put for their immediate, their most solemn warning, in his fullest knowledge of their secret enmity to all vital godliness? "Wherefore ye be witnesses

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unto yourselves, that ye are the children of “them which killed the Prophets. Fill ye up, "then, the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye 66 escape the damnation of hell?" (St. Matt. xxiii. 30-33.) Can there be stronger manifestation of the extreme danger in which those persons stand who live under spiritual opportunities, and the light of redeeming love shining around them, unaccepted and refused, than language such as this from the very mouth of the meek and lowly Jesus, the tender and compassionating sufferer for the sins of the world? And where is there a distinction betwixt you who, in heart and life, now reject Christ, and those who in his immediate presence declared,

"We will not have this man to rule over us?" You must not speak of Jewish blindness, while you yourself remain wilfully blind; you cannot condemn heathen idolatry, while an idolatrous love of earth and self puts you among those who fight against God, and so causes you to turn your deaf ear against a Heavenly Father's gracious invitation of" My son, give me "thine heart.' The blindness of the Jew, so visible to yourself, the ignorance and infatuation of the idolatrous heathen, which you so constantly discern, will only aggravate your final ruin, tenfold increased by the light which now shines to guide you, and the knowledge which you really have.

Let this consideration not be lost upon you. "Walk while ye have the light." Why live the enemy to him, that gracious Saviour, who hath so entirely loved you? Whether Jew or Gentile, bond or free, "the same Lord is rich "toward all that call upon him." Call you, then, upon this merciful Saviour; and he will be a willing, a sufficient Saviour for you. Be alive to your eternal interests in him, and you will be awakened in a most glorious experience in the practical and personal expression of your heartfelt astonishment at the magnitude

of that Saviour's love. In time

you

will ex

perience his mercy, in eternity you will share his glory; and in time and in eternity your endless song will be amid the thousand times ten thousand that surround his Throne, astonished and glorifying in the greatness and wonder of their salvation: with them will you join in the enraptured utterance of "O the

depth of the riches both of the wisdom and "knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his "judgments, and his ways past finding out!" (Rom. xi. 33.)